“Employees are happy, also on Monday mornings”

“The other day, I heard shouts of joy in the office next to mine. It was one of my co-workers, 29 years old, who succeeded in winning a nine million dollars contract for the company.” For the Loccioni group, young talented people are not an exception. In his company, co-workers’ average age is 33 years old. However, it is not only this that makes the company from the Marches work well. Yesterday, its founder, Enrico Loccioni, told this to the Unversity of Insubria Economics department. For his way of doing business, he has been the first to be awarded, as Olivetti entrepreneur, by the Adriano Olivetti Foundation. “There is a rule I have always followed: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you:” for example, I do not like repetitive jobs and useless tasks. So, when I was young and I decided not to run my parents’ farm and even not to work as an employee, I have always tried to remember this rule. I followed some entrepreneurs’ example, like Olivetti, Mattei and then Aristide Merloni, who have done business in Italy and in my region the Marches.”

Loccioni group, today, is present in dozens of countries all over the world. It successfully deals with different activities, that go from energy saving to new technologies, it cooperates with different companies, among which, for example, Whirlpool and Enel. Together with these companies, he created, in the Marches, the first sustainable energy community, Leaf community. “ During all my life, I have had many opportunities: the group had success and some of the large companies even offered to buy it. I could have become rich and retire early. But I did not do it. I like watching my group “growing up”, I love development.”

From the Olivetti teaching, Loccioni emphasised that: “Today it is all focused on the short term: make profits rapidly, think about day to day operations. This it is not useful. During these years of changes, there are great potentialities. Like in every moving situation, people who are able to look at the future know where to go. With the demolition of borders and the growth of the Internet, there are great possibilities for the development of all our companies. It is obvious that the company is made also by everyday life and also by profit. However we do not have to stop our vision in front of this. Our activity was born for freedom. I started the extraordinary entrepreneurial life also because I wanted to create job and opportunities for others. Mattei and Merloni were large because they placed at the centre the work and the people. This is what I try to do. Give trust to my collaborators. No-one entered my company because they have been recommended and no-one has left slamming the door behind them. For me this is a success, a unions problem would have been a defeat.”. “A couple of days ago” concluded the entrepreneur “I was struck by a client’s phrase who I was accompanying on a visit of the company. He had asked me ‘How do you do it? It’s Monday morning and your workers are working with a smile – I never saw anything similar’. I am sure that it is like this because the workers have understood the soul of the group: they are the ones that chose to be a part of this identity.”